recovery console administration password

[stringcheeseincident]

my friend has a dell with winxp pro installed and he's getting this error i'm trying to fix for him. the xp cd dell gave him doesn't load the windows setup thing so i'm using my winxp home cd, does that work? i try to go to the recovery console and it asks for the administration password, i tried all the passwords for every username on their computer and none of them work. what password is it?

 

[spartan]

I think you need the password for the user 'Administrator'.

 

[stringcheeseincident]

what if they never set up the user administrator and i can't boot into windows?

 

[spartan]

I don't know... try a blank password or 'Adminstrator' as the password?

 

[stringcheeseincident]

blank password doesn't work, i'll try administrator if i get the chance. anyone else?

 

[Nothinman]

If the password isn't blank they had to set one up, unless you feel like brute forcing it Dell is the one one who can tell you what it is.

 

[stringcheeseincident]

his dell came with xp home installed on it and his cousin set up xp pro, would his cousin have the admin password now?

 

[Nothinman]

If his cousin isn't an idiot, yes.

 

[MiniDoom]

Maybe you can reset the password with this.

 

[fw3308]

You definitely need the admin password for the local admin account of the XP installation. If your cousind does not know it then you have a couple of options: Do a parallel install and try to recover any data, format and reinstall, or use what is called a Linux Boot disk which will crack the admin account password on the machine. You can google for it and find one out there. One floppy will do the trick. I have had to use that type of disk on some serves before and have had successful results at getting into the system again via the recovery console.

 

[unixfool]

Not every Linux boot disk will have the cracking tools to find the password. In fact, hardly any do.

He'd have better luck looking for specific password cracking programs that searching for Linux boot disks that contain crack tools.

I think you're confusing 'boot disk' with live CDs...Linux bootable distributions. And even then, not all will have the security tools to do vulnerability assessments.

Only one distro comes to mind: Knoppix STD (Security Tools Distribution). Google on that.

 

[unixfool]

Double post...sorry 'bout that.

 

[Abzstrak]

Originally posted by: rdubbz420
Maybe you can reset the password with this.

This will fix it in less than 5 minutes

 

[islandtechengineers]

hey i didnt mean to post a dead one.... sorry about that, what i thought would help actually would not = as i tested what i was going to type about, i remembered that way into xp would only work if you knew the passwords to your pc and it would get past the logon and within a sec, freeze. not computer frozen, meaning, freeze as in doesnt go anywhere from there, cant do anything. my friends comp did that and i discovered a way into his pc = after entereing the password, you instantly hit the F8 key and the dos emulated console would appear. allowing access into the pc; from there you could lauch progs to get your stuff. it was a dell on xp home edition and i forgot what he did to screw his pc up.

anyway... did you end up getting into your pc?

 

[spyordie007]

If you have a 2k pro disk use it to boot the machine into recovery console and leave the password blank. It's a little known fact that a win2k pro disk will get you past the admin login (dont know if they've fixed this in SP2 or not).

-Erik